Once-popular Off-Track Betting parlors disappearing from city, with 11 closing by September

In fiscal 2010, OTB bettors put down $815 million on the ponies, compared with $959 million in fiscal 1990 - a 15% drop. (Costanza for News)

OTB parlors, a staple of city neighborhoods since the 1970s, are disappearing at full gallop.

With Off-Track Betting clawing its way out of bankruptcy, by year's end the number of parlors will be about half what it was in 1990.

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Twenty years ago, there were 98 parlors in the city. At the start of this year, there were 63 - and 11 of those will be gone by early September.

Closing unprofitable parlors might seem like a no-brainer, but it comes with a price. As the number of parlors has dropped, the handle - or dollars bet - has fallen. In fiscal 2010, OTB bettors put down $815 million on the ponies, compared with $959 million in fiscal 1990 - a 15% drop.

When the city closed a parlor on Myrtle Ave. in Queens in 2005, the handle dropped by millions because the customers didn't transfer their business to other parlors, a 2007 study found.

Greg Rayburn, the agency's new $125,000-a-month CEO, had no comment on the closings he ordered within days of his arrival.

Morgan Hook, a spokesman for Gov. Paterson, said the branches being shuttered are losing money and there are other OTBs nearby.

"The parlors were dark, filthy and unappetizing - a blight on the community," Kruger said.

OTB customers see the closings differently.

"It's sad. You grow attached to something and they take it away from you," said Miguel Torres, 58, who stops at OTB's midtown teletheater six days a week. Now that it's closing, he will go to a Yonkers OTB to bet.

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Former OTB Chairman Meyer Frucher argued this year that two-thirds of the betting parlors should be closed and half the 1,300 employees laid off.

He planned to spread the closings over two years, replace some parlors with machines in bars and bodegas, and build a flagship in each borough.

He quit when the Legislature balked and the governor withdrew his support.